Robb_K wrote:Egg, you are so right with this point of view. It is exactly as mine is (EVEN as a scientist!). I am DEFINITELY not fully convinced that The US space programme actually placed humans on The Moon.

Ok, Rob, don't forget your tin-foiled hat next time you take a walk, ok?

The moon landing is definatelty real. It's simply impossible that the thousands of people who worked at NASA and the astronauts could've kept this a secret for such a long time. Heck, the White House can't even keep a couple of e-mails secret, and you expect such an organisation to be silent for over almost four decades? Dutch historian, American-expert and professor at Utrecht University Maarten van Rossem has discredited 'moonlanding-sceptics' in an issue of the magazine 'Historisch Nieuwsblad' (Issue 4, September 2004):

Translated:

"In the Juli-issue of the American magazine Astronomy it's all neatly explained that it was significantly easier to land on the moon than to pretend it had happened.

To start with: how is it possible that none of the tens of thousands employees of NASA has ever revealed the truth about fake landings? Even more unlikely is the fact that the hundreds of people in Hollywood who had to be involved in the creation of such a landing have kept their mouths shut for over 30 years. Very strange also, is that NASA continued to launch the gigantic Saturn-rockets, that apparantly went nowhere. And if the moonlandings were fake, there have to be hundreds of scientific researchers involved from many different countries. The American astronauts brought with them about fourhundred kilogram of moonstones, which were studied by many diffrenet organisations. The oldest moobstones are dated to be 4,4 biljon years old. On the tectonic much older Earth, there was never found a rock that's older than 3,8 biljon years.

The most excellent objection to the theory of moonlandings however, is undoubtley the fact that gravity on the moon is only one-sixth of the gravity on Earth. That difference makes every movement on the moon look different than the same movement on Earth. Think about the odd hopping movements of the astronauts. However, also the moondust that whirls up looks significantly different. In the 1970's, Hollywood didn't have the special effects to recreate the moonmovement. Nowadays, Hollywood would be able to do that. Therefore there's much reason to distrust the images of the American landing on Mars in a year or 20."

Rockerduck wrote:The moon landing is definatelty real. It's simply impossible that the thousands of people who worked at NASA and the astronauts could've kept this a secret for such a long time. Heck, the White House can't even keep a couple of e-mails secret, and you expect such an organisation to be silent for over almost four decades? Dutch historian, American-expert and professor at Utrecht University Maarten van Rossem has discredited 'moonlanding-sceptics' in an issue of the magazine 'Historisch Nieuwsblad' (Issue 4, September 2004):

Translated:

"In the Juli-issue of the American magazine Astronomy it's all neatly explained that it was significantly easier to land on the moon than to pretend it had happened.

To start with: how is it possible that none of the tens of thousands employees of NASA has ever revealed the truth about fake landings? Even more unlikely is the fact that the hundreds of people in Hollywood who had to be involved in the creation of such a landing have kept their mouths shut for over 30 years. Very strange also, is that NASA continued to launch the gigantic Saturn-rockets, that apparantly went nowhere. And if the moonlandings were fake, there have to be hundreds of scientific researchers involved from many different countries. The American astronauts brought with them about fourhundred kilogram of moonstones, which were studied by many diffrenet organisations. The oldest moobstones are dated to be 4,4 biljon years old. On the tectonic much older Earth, there was never found a rock that's older than 3,8 biljon years.

The most excellent objection to the theory of moonlandings however, is undoubtley the fact that gravity on the moon is only one-sixth of the gravity on Earth. That difference makes every movement on the moon look different than the same movement on Earth. Think about the odd hopping movements of the astronauts. However, also the moondust that whirls up looks significantly different. In the 1970's, Hollywood didn't have the special effects to recreate the moonmovement. Nowadays, Hollywood would be able to do that. Therefore there's much reason to distrust the images of the American landing on Mars in a year or 20."

I didn't say that I BELIEVE that the moonlanding DIDN'T occur. I just wrote that I wasn't FULLY convinced that it did occur. There is a large difference there. It is a good point that it would have been difficult for all the people involved in a faking of the moon landings. But I don't know if a lot of people at NASA needed to know it was faked. I come from academia (3 masters degrees), and am a scientist. Yet, I don't even concede fully that my life is "real" or what it seems. So, I can always hold out a small portion of my beliefs for the possibility that what I seem to perceive may not be real. MANY times I have come to see that what I believed from life experience, or had been told by society or so-called authorities (or was in print-generally accepted in society) was totally false. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that I believe totally and without some scepticism.

Secondly,- I COULD look up statistics on deaths and injuries from gunfire in USA, but just as the official "inflation rate" figures published by the US Government are underreported in relation to the "actual" inflation rate, the "official" gun-related casualty rate is bound to be underreported (as the gun lobby has much wealth and power in USA). Even so, I am sure that the gun-related casualty figures for USA are MUCH, MUCH higher than for Canada and Europe, as when I saw those figures for all those countries in the past, USA was multiple times higher. I am also sure that the rate in European countries has been increasing during recent years. But it should still be many times lower than that of USA.

Rockerduck wrote:The moon landing is definatelty real. It's simply impossible that the thousands of people who worked at NASA and the astronauts could've kept this a secret for such a long time. Heck, the White House can't even keep a couple of e-mails secret, and you expect such an organisation to be silent for over almost four decades?

How does this scepticism match with the conspiracy that G.W. Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened, and that Bush has connections with Bin Laden? How is it possible to have a group, that is said to have been at least approximately 20 terrorists big, hijack planes to fly into buildings that are said to be loaded with bombs that have been placed by American secret services? That would have been a cooperation between Americans and people from the Middle-East, in an attempt to destabilize America. How could that have remained a secret?

This is THE FIRST article on The Internet that I found: <http://www.guncite.com/cnngunde.html>

It states that the study was done independently, on the international level, covering the 36 most industrialised nations in The World. It states that USA has 5-6 times as many gun-related deaths as the average European country.

Of course, anyone can get ANYTHING printed. That doesn't make it true. For every study on one side of an argument, one can find a "study" proving the opposite (funded by the opposition).

But, as the two studies above also match what I have seen and experienced in my own life, I have little trouble believing they are truly scientific and represent truth in life. A study finding the opposite would seem to me falsified, and paid for by big money with a vested interest in wanting the opposite findings.

Egg wrote:How does this scepticism match with the conspiracy that G.W. Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened, and that Bush has connections with Bin Laden? How is it possible to have a group, that is said to have been at least approximately 20 terrorists big, hijack planes to fly into buildings that are said to be loaded with bombs that have been placed by American secret services? That would have been a cooperation between Americans and people from the Middle-East, in an attempt to destabilize America. How could that have remained a secret?

What has the moonlandings got to do with conspiracy theories about 9/11? Who brought up 9/11? Who brought up the idea of the secret service placing bombs in the WTC? Definately not me. I don't see any connection. So why come up with it? Do I have to explain a totally unrelated conspiracy theory thought up by others than myself? And even if I would explain it, how does one conspiracy confirm or outrule another one? To use that kind of 'logic' is dellusional and completly false.

(That the Bush family has bussiness relationships to the Bin Laden-family is public record. Salem bin Laden invested in companies George H.W. Bush also invested in, there's the story about Harken and Carlyle, these families did bussiness dating as far back as the 1980's.)

Robb_K wrote:Of course, anyone can get ANYTHING printed. That doesn't make it true. For every study on one side of an argument, one can find a "study" proving the opposite (funded by the opposition).

That's why one should be careful judging sources. It's fairly EASY to tell the difference between a reliable study and a 'hobby-study'. RELIABLE studies are not only done by scholars, they're also peer-reviewed before being published. That means their colleagues have read the study and looked if there were no faults in the definition of the subject, the way the main questions were asked, the way the study was carried out, the way in which results were found, the likeability to be able to generalize the outcome etc. etc.

Robb_K wrote:But, as the two studies above also match what I have seen and experienced in my own life, I have little trouble believing they are truly scientific and represent truth in life. A study finding the opposite would seem to me falsified, and paid for by big money with a vested interest in wanting the opposite findings.

YES, there are knows instances were scientists were bribed to tell things that weren't true. Like when the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-conservative think-tank advising the White House, and ExxonMobile, gave scholars up to $10,000 to declare global warming was not man-made.http://www.guardian.co.uk/international ... 30,00.html

But see, that's a whole DIFFERENT situation, because in this case, you can actually PROOF they're bribed, because you got FACTS to back it up. But saying that anything that doesn't respond with your own personal viewpoint must be falsified and paid for by big money, is no more than a GUT FEELING. (The Dutch word for it would be 'onderbuik' in case some Dutch readers are wondering.) And if you judge scientific work from you're gut, you're no better than the faith-over-facts crowd that doesn't believe in evolution despite scientific evidence, because their believesystem tells them otherwise.

I like you and I respect you, Rob, but if you're really the scientist you say you are, you can't make such statements.

Robb_K wrote:Of course, anyone can get ANYTHING printed. That doesn't make it true. For every study on one side of an argument, one can find a "study" proving the opposite (funded by the opposition).

That's why one should be careful judging sources. It's fairly EASY to tell the difference between a reliable study and a 'hobby-study'. RELIABLE studies are not only done by scholars, they're also peer-reviewed before being published. That means their colleagues have read the study and looked if there were no faults in the definition of the subject, the way the main questions were asked, the way the study was carried out, the way in which results were found, the likeability to be able to generalize the outcome etc. etc.

Robb_K wrote:But, as the two studies above also match what I have seen and experienced in my own life, I have little trouble believing they are truly scientific and represent truth in life. A study finding the opposite would seem to me falsified, and paid for by big money with a vested interest in wanting the opposite findings.

YES, there are knows instances were scientists were bribed to tell things that weren't true. Like when the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-conservative think-tank advising the White House, and ExxonMobile, gave scholars up to $10,000 to declare global warming was not man-made.http://www.guardian.co.uk/international ... 30,00.html

But see, that's a whole DIFFERENT situation, because in this case, you can actually PROOF they're bribed, because you got FACTS to back it up. But saying that anything that doesn't respond with your own personal viewpoint must be falsified and paid for by big money, is no more than a GUT FEELING. (The Dutch word for it would be 'onderbuik' in case some Dutch readers are wondering.) And if you judge scientific work from you're gut, you're no better than the faith-over-facts crowd that doesn't believe in evolution despite scientific evidence, because their believesystem tells them otherwise.

I like you and I respect you, Rob, but if you're really the scientist you say you are, you can't make such statements.

Maybe I didn't use the correct wording on my statement above. Ja! Ik weet wat bedoeld onderbuik. It is true that my statement above says "I would have little trouble believing that the study is scientific if it matches what I see in real life"-and that is a gut feeling. But I wouldn't base my judgement as to whether it really is a proper scientific study without doing research to find out if it really is. The same would be true in the opposite case. Even if the study found the opposite results to what I have seen in my life experience, it could still be a scientific study with the correct findings. My comments were just what I would feel about it, NOT making a final judgement. Of course, I know I haven't met enough people in USA or other countries, or witnessed a large percentage of the shootings in all these countries to know how the different countries compared. What I should have written is: I suspect that those two studies (which I found at random (didn't screen for results) are likely not incorrect (at least in the DIRECTION of their findings), as they were done under INTERNATIONAL auspices, and match the direction that I have witnessed in my own life experience, much of the writing on that subject, the findings of ALL the studies quoted on that subject that I've encountered in the past (more than 20), AND that logic points to (more limitations on access to guns by the general public > less guns among the population > less shooting incidents > less deaths from shooting incidents). It is not definitive proof that the study findings are true. I have little reason to believe that there are exactly 5-6 times as many shooting deaths in USA per capita than there are in Western European or European countries. But I have more chance than not of being correct that there are more shotting deaths in USA per capita than in Europe, and that that difference is more likely to be of some significance than not.

The purpose of the original wording was to explain why I don't want to spend more time researching those studies, or bringing up more studies. I shouldn't have used that specific wording, as I never intended to imply that I KNOW that those 2 studies were done employing proper scientific methods and its findings were approved by those scientist's peers. Had the findings of the first two studies that I found randomly, gone against what I've experienced in my own life experience, what I had read in ALL that I had read on that subject, the results of ALL the studies I had seen results of, AND against the logic of "more gun control>less guns among the general public>less gun deaths", THEN, I would have done more research into those 2 studies.

But I would NEVER say that those two studies have been conducted with proper scientific method unless I did the research to find out if that were so. I attained a Masters Degree in Environmental Science and Engineering, and worked in air and water pollution control and modeling. I know what scientific method is.

Robb_K wrote:The purpose of the original wording was to explain why I don't want to spend more time researching those studies, or bringing up more studies.

Exactly, Rob! You´re damned if you do and you´re damned if you don´t. If you come up with staticstics plus comments, then they´re not good enough. If you refuse to play that game, you risk name calling like being called a weak coward like I did. It´s certainly enough to scare new members and regulars away, who think they can have a friendly chat about the topics of the day, as you said in your post at the beginning of this page...

Barko wrote:Exactly, Rob! You´re damned if you do and you´re damned if you don´t. If you come up with staticstics plus comments, then they´re not good enough.

That's made-up nonsense and you know it. The only thing I'm saying, is that one needs to examine statistics carefully to see if they're right. I did *not* say all statistics you will find are automatically wrong. You constantly spin my words.

Barko wrote:If you refuse to play that game, you risk name calling like being called a weak coward like I did.

Only because at first, *you* bragged an awful lot about how much knowledge you had. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Barko wrote:It´s certainly enough to scare new members and regulars away, who think they can have a friendly chat about the topics of the day, as you said in your post at the beginning of this page...

Now this is just an attempt to make me look bad, when in fact, all I did was starting a discussion about scientific methods. I'm sure no-one will be scared of a forum where one takes the subjects one discusses seriously.

I disagree about people not being scared away. This international forum has 3 very few regular posters from outside the regular Dutch Forum (Rockerduck, Egg (Ei)/ Daniël(moderator),Myself, and Luuuk and Henrieke (very seldom). They are: Barko, Ole Damgaard and Pryds (Danmark), Olivier (France), and Dr. Witchie Britchie(WB) and Flintheart Glomgold (USA). There was also one Canadian (forget name). Many of these have posted very little lately.

If they see extended bickering and name calling on a significant percentage of the threads, or as a significant percentage of the volume of posts on this forum, I contend that they WILL choose to avoid coming here, as they will consider wading through too many posts that are not at all in their interest, a waste of time.

Of course the bickering on this one thread is confine to this thread, and, thus segregated from the other threads. So, at this point, we are in no danger, as people can just avoid this thread. I am just hoping that this type of posting doesn't spread to threads in other categories, and become common all over the forum.

Robb_K wrote:I disagree about people not being scared away. This international forum has 3 very few regular posters from outside the regular Dutch Forum (Rockerduck, Egg (Ei)/ Daniël(moderator),Myself, and Luuuk and Henrieke (very seldom). They are: Barko, Ole Damgaard and Pryds (Danmark), Olivier (France), and Dr. Witchie Britchie(WB) and Flintheart Glomgold (USA). There was also one Canadian (forget name). Many of these have posted very little lately.

If they see extended bickering and name calling on a significant percentage of the threads, or as a significant percentage of the volume of posts on this forum, I contend that they WILL choose to avoid coming here, as they will consider wading through too many posts that are not at all in their interest, a waste of time.

Bingo, Rob! - You have won a teddybear Name calling will only add to the member crisis. I hope we can turn this crisis around in time, although it seems like most people have left in favor of the DCF forum. I would like to see McDrake forum getting some more action, because I think it´s important that there´s more than one international forum. Especially since rules and atmosphere differs from forum to forum. Also I don´t like monopoly. Btw, what caused this decline in members? As you know I´ve been away so I´m a bit in the dark!